


above all shadows

by Wildehack (tyleet)



Series: Author's Favorites [14]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Annabelle Cane - Freeform, Basira Hussein - Freeform, Canon Typical Violence, Daisy Tonner - Freeform, Elias Bouchard - Freeform, M/M, Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 02:10:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19454188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: It is a fairytale, in the end.





	above all shadows

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down like "what if I wrote a fic where Elias was nice," and somehow got this instead. I blame Martin.

The Watcher’s Crown fails.  
  
It happens in the British Museum--the heart of some kind of Knowing, under the vast white iris of the central dome--and after the spiders bring the ceiling down, glass shattering around them in a deadly rain as darkness and eight-legged things pour in from the night, Jon thinks he’s going to die. That this finally marks the end of the story.  
  
But he doesn’t. The threads tying him to the other Entities are ripped from him, and for a time that feels like dying--but at the end of it he finds himself on the floor of the Great Court, something wet and sticky on his face.  
  
He scrapes himself off the floor, and finds Basira in the rubble a little ways away, clutching her eyes and rocking back and forth. “Come on,” he says, waveringly, but the sound of a human voice is enough to break whatever spell it is. Basira stops rocking, looks at him with a dazed, confused expression. She’s been crying blood. He reaches for her, and after her expression clears she reaches back, leaning hard on his arm. Together they limp out of the main hall, staying well away from the shadows and the things still skittering there.  
  
They find Martin in the Egyptian wing, tying a makeshift tourniquet around Daisy’s arm. Jon’s heart rockets awake, a palpable thing in his throat and wrists. Daisy is conscious, but covered in blood, collapsed on a toppled piece of rubble that--dear god, that appears to be the Rosetta Stone. Basira lets out a small hurt noise and lets go of Jon, reaching out for Daisy with open hands.  
  
“All right,” Daisy says, and crooks her free arm around Basira’s neck, awkwardly. “All right, no one died.” Basira says something unintelligible into Daisy’s shoulder, and Jon looks away, tries to give them a second of privacy.

Martin finishes tying off Daisy’s arm, and then looks up at Jon, his eyes blue and enormous. He looks like he’s in one piece, although he’s terribly pale. “She needs a hospital,” Martin says, crossing his arms hard over his own chest, like he’s cold. “I--maybe you do, too? Your _eyes_ \--”  
  
“I’m all right,” Jon says automatically, although he has no idea if that’s true. He’s trying not to think about the ragged wounds in his mind, the things no hospital could begin to heal. “But we should, um--we shouldn’t stay here.” He offers Martin his hand, and only remembers that maybe he shouldn’t when Martin stares at it for a long second, somehow going even paler. Jon starts to draw back, but at the last second Martin lunges towards him, and he ends up with Martin’s freezing hand in his.  
  
Jon helps pull Martin to his feet, but he doesn’t let go of his hand. It feels like Martin could use the warmth.  
  
Basira does the same for Daisy, slinging her arm over her shoulders and half-holding her up. “What happened to Melanie?” she asks, sniffing sharply and scrubbing at her face.  
  
“Helen took her,” Martin offers, hand twitching a little in Jon’s. Jon squeezes him more firmly, and he can feel Martin sway towards him. “Before the roof came down.”  
  
“Then let’s get out of here,” Daisy growls, and glares at a particularly dark patch of shadow, although she can barely stand.  
  
Jon is ready to follow them towards the exit, Martin slowly warming under his touch, but he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something left for him to do, something he’s forgotten, and by the time Martin pulls him over the threshold of the main atrium he remembers it.  
  
“--Wait,” he says, dread pooling in his stomach. “I--Elias is still up there.”  
  
“ _So_ ,” Daisy rasps, and spits blood to the floor.  
  
“So,” Jon says, certain and miserable with it, “I have to go back.”  
  
“You’re joking,” Basira says flatly, and Daisy makes a pained, disbelieving noise from over her shoulder.  
  
Jon wishes he were. “Get Daisy to a hospital,” he says, the thought of going back in there filling him with a kind of exhausted terror. It’s just that he can’t think of doing anything else. “I’ll meet you there.”  
  
He tries to let go of Martin’s hand, but Martin won’t let him.  
  
“You won’t leave him?” Martin asks softly, and Jon shakes his head, not really knowing why but knowing it’s true. “Okay,” Martin says, and squeezes his hand. “Then let’s go back.”   
  
“You don’t have to,” Jon begins, and Martin snorts.  
  
‘“Course I do,” he says, and gives Jon a look that’s a shadow of past looks he’s given Jon, back when they were just coworkers and Martin had to bully him into eating lunch and the worst thing that happened in Jon’s week was Martin bringing a stray dog into the Archives--something like exhausted fondness. “You think I don’t know you’re afraid of spiders?” 

Jon chokes on a laugh.  
  
“Go, if you’re going,” Basira says roughly. “Find us at the hospital.”  
  
“Don’t die,” Daisy adds.  
  
Jon and Martin turn around, back to the looming dark. Jon laces their fingers together. 

They go back in together.  
  
*  
It’s horrible, being back in the exposed air of the collapsed Great Court. There are steel beams collapsed everywhere, tile and glass making a ruin of the gift shop, the tables. The ruined dome above them now looks less like an eye and more like a fragile web of steelwork, one breeze away from falling apart and killing them all. And little skittering, scuttling movements through it all, shapes Jon can’t look at directly. 

“Do you know where he is?” Martin murmurs, and Jon nods.  
  
“Up,” he says, and points them towards what’s left of the west stairs.  
  
At one point Martin stops them and picks up a pen from the floor--an overpriced souvenir pen, probably rolled out of the wreck of the gift shop. Martin uncaps it, testing the fountain nib. “In case we need to--I don’t know, cut through web?” Martin says to Jon’s incredulous look.  
  
But it isn’t ridiculous, because the stairs are sticky with spider silk. Really they should have machetes.  
  
They have to duck carefully to avoid strings of it as thick as vines, climbing over others, a delicate thing to do without letting go of each other, which Jon instinctively thinks would be a bad idea.  
  
“Gonna tell me again how they’re good for the ecosystem,” Jon murmurs, and Martin laughs shakily.  
  
“Well, they are,” Martin says. “Maybe--maybe even in this. They did sort of. Save the world.”  
  
“From us,” Jon says, the horror of it hitting him all over again.  
  
“From you, yeah,” Martin says softly, and strokes his thumb over Jon’s knuckles. “I’m glad you’re-- _you_ , again.”  
  
“Me too,” Jon says, and means it. 

They climb higher, and then much higher. Jon is sure the museum isn’t nearly as tall as this, but the stairs keep stretching up, and the night and the vast web above them get no closer. Jon’s lungs start to ache after a while, and Martin has a hand pressed to his side like he’s developing a stitch, but he doesn’t dare stop. Martin doesn’t ask him to, either, just keeps hold of his hand and breathes heavily.  
  
Lightning flashes, and Jon sees that they aren’t in the Museum any longer, the vast white building designed by Robert Smirke. They’re climbing an ancient stone staircase spiralling horribly into nothing, into the night, and around them are webs and webs and silk enough for all his nightmares.  
  
“It’s like,” Martin pants, and Jon mentally finishes _like a fairytale_ , only Martin sucks in another inhale and says “--like the Lord of the Rings,” and Jon is startled into a laugh, the effort of it briefly making him dizzy.  
  
“It is,” Martin insists. “Like, like Sam climbing the tall tower to--find Frodo after--he thinks he’s been--killed by the spider,” and then he’s clearly beyond speech for a second, leaning hard on Jon’s arm.  
  
Jon was never in love with Tolkien the way he is pretty sure Martin must have been. Viggo Mortensen never did anything for him. But he was a bookish teenager in the early 2000s, so of course he remembers the scene.  
  
He takes a deep breath in, and then begins: “Though here at journey’s end I lie, in darkness buried deep…”  
  
Martin gives a breathless, almost panicked laugh, and takes it up. “Beyond--all towers strong and high--beyond all--mountains steep. Above all shadows--” his voice falters, and he stumbles on the next stair, almost dragging them both down.  
  
Jon has the distinct impression that the darkness doesn’t like them singing. He steadies Martin and pulls them both forward, and starts back where Martin left off, and after an unsteady instant Martin starts singing with him. Jon isn’t a great singer, and they’re both rasping and tired, but--the song echoes up and down the stairwell for a second, exactly like it means something.  
  
_Above all shadows rides the sun,_ __  
_and stars forever dwell:_ __  
_I will not say the day is done,_ __  
_nor shall bid the stars farewell._  
  
When they stop singing, Jon sees that the next turn of the staircase is completely covered by web, a thick gauze like a veil. They can’t avoid touching it--they’ll have to tear at it, or turn back. And he can’t turn back. 

“You know,” Martin murmurs, sounding less overwhelmed by the climb as they walk the last few steps to the veil, “That song doesn’t have a melody. It wasn’t in the film. So what were we singing, just now?” 

“I don’t know,” Jon answers, and he doesn’t think he _could_ know right now, either. He hasn’t felt this human in--months? The Eye is still in him, but defeated it’s--quiet, strained. The only thing it has the strength left to do is tug him towards Elias, like a body clasping its hand to a wound. 

Jon reaches for the gauze with his free hand, and sees Martin doing the same, holding out his ridiculous fountain pen. The curtain clings to them both as they break through, and Jon coughs against the feeling of it, the old fear bubbling up in his chest, wondering if at any moment now a huge black leg will reach for him, or worse, for _Martin_ \--  
  
\--but they break through the veil together, and it’s only Martin that reaches for him with his free hand, brushing sheets of web away from Jon’s face.  
  
Martin is covered in cobwebs himself, but the expression on his face is determined, focused completely on Jon.  
  
“Are you done with the Lukases?” Jon asks suddenly, even though it’s absolutely not the time, just because Martin’s thumb just brushed his cheekbone, and his fingers are still on Jon’s jaw.  
  
Martin hesitates, dropping his hand away from Jon’s face. “I don’t know,” he says slowly. He looks troubled. “After this I might have to be.”  
  
“I’m glad,” Jon says, and on impulse brings their joined hands to his chest. “I--you know I’ve been--” He isn’t even sure what he wants to say. Martin knows Jon missed him, but does he know all the stupid _weight_ Jon’s put on his memory? Martin is the last person, or very nearly the last person--to, to like him. Human him. Jon Sims, before he died. All these months, Martin has felt like--like a missing anchor, like if Jon could only get Martin to _touch_ him, he could slip a line around his wrist and keep himself tethered to the world, somehow. Which isn’t fair, isn’t--reasonable to put on anyone, let alone the traumatized subordinate you know has feelings for you. But that’s how it is. “You know I missed you,” is what he winds up saying, utterly inadequate.  
  
Martin is bright pink. “Let’s just, um, let’s just rescue Elias,” he says, and the way he says it makes Jon think he means “and then we’ll go from there.”  
  
Jon takes a look around them. They appear to have finished the staircase and come to a landing, although that also isn’t at all right, because they’re in a forest at night. There’s moss-covered trees, green roots sticking up out of the ground, somewhere nearby the sound of water. Silver tangles of web completely block the sky from view.  
  
“This way,” Jon says, and follows the sound of the water.   
  
It _is_ a fairytale, in the end.  
  
A woman he easily recognizes as Annabelle Cane is sitting on a stone table by a waterfall, a bright knife in her hand. In her arms is Elias Bouchard, covered in web and barely conscious, bleeding from a long, shallow cut across his throat. She’s been drinking the blood, her mouth stained with it. 

Or looking at it another way: a massive black spider crouches over an eldritch thing like a biblical angel, covered in eyes. Half of them are blinded, most of them are weeping, and the spider has her fangs buried in the thing’s throat, drinking deep.  
  
There’s an eight year old boy in Jon’s mind who knows he’s going to die, and wants to run away more than he’s wanted to do anything in his life. But the Archivist requires his Watcher, and--Martin is still holding his hand, and Martin likes spiders. Once, years ago, Jon broke his computer throwing a book at a spider that crawled out of a statement folder and onto his keyboard, and Martin came in from the other room and shouted at him about it, cupped the little thing in his hands and carried it gently outside. Jon had stared at his cracked monitor and thought mean, derisive things about people who had that much compassion for nasty little creatures that wouldn’t ever love them back.  
  
“Ms. Cane,” he says, surprised by how evenly his voice comes out. “Congratulations on your recent victory.”  
  
“Thank you, Archivist,” she says, in a deep, resonant voice that is also somehow thin and wispy. She takes another sip from Elias’s neck, and he groans, his eyes fluttering. “I rather like the world as it is, you see.”  
  
“Having beaten us,” Jon says, swallowing. “I wonder if I might have my Watcher back.” 

“Oh,” Annabelle says. “I don’t think so.” She presses a sweet kiss to Elias’s cheekbone, and he shudders. “It was very tiring, destroying the British Museum. I need to eat _some_ thing.” 

“Is there anything I can give you to make you change your mind?” Jon asks, drawing on the last reserves of his power.  
  
Annabelle blinks at him, with a multitude of glossy black eyes. “ _Hmm_ ,” she says. “Well. If you’re _asking_.”  
  
She crooks a finger, and Martin takes a sudden, jerking step forward, almost wrenching out of Jon’s grip.  
  
Jon’s heart almost stops. “No,” he says, stepping closer to Martin again, panicked. “No, I’m afraid that’s--he’s not on offer.”  
  
He can feel Martin’s pulse beating wildly in his wrist.  
  
“He was half-mine before the Lonely claimed him,” Anabelle says. “And could be again.” She smiles at Martin, who is wide-eyed and transfixed, his hand gone limp in Jon’s. “I like feasting, but I like children, too.”  
  
Spiders _eat their young_ , Jon thinks in frantic refusal, and grabs Martin’s shoulder with his other hand, stopping him from taking any more steps in her direction. Martin still strains towards her, like he’s caught at the end of an invisible rope, pulled taut.

She laughs softly. “It is your choice, Archivist. Your servant or your Watcher.”  
  
The Archivist knows what must be done. If the Web continues to feed from the Watcher--if she drains him completely, and eats of his flesh--the Eye will be in the Web’s sway for hundreds of years. They’ll See only what it wants them to See, Know only those things the Web wants them to Know. The Watcher himself may not even be reborn. They’ll have to begin again, and it will be long, it will be arduous, it will require so much of their Attention that they might not be quite so vigilant about stopping their sisters from rushing to completion, and _then where will they be_. Assistants, on the other hand, are there to be sacrificed. 

Jon Sims can’t abide it. Won’t abide it.   
  
For a very long time now, Jon has felt caught between two poles. Pulled towards destiny on the one side, grasping futilely at the shreds of his humanity on the other. In some ways it feels like--like the only good thing he’s done since he died was bringing Daisy back from the coffin. The only time he’s been able to draw himself towards both things at once.  
  
“What if you took me,” he says abruptly, and Martin goes totally slack against him.  
  
“ _Jon_ ,” he whispers, like he’s waking up.  
  
“You?” Annabelle asks, raising--her eyebrows, her foreleg, whichever.  
  
“Me,” Jon says. “I, I was also marked by you. As a child. And an Archivist must taste nearly as good as a Watcher, so--whichever you like.” Archivists also come and go: if she eats him, the Eye will be hurt, but not nearly so badly as if it lost Elias. “Child or meal. Take me.”  
  
“You can’t,” Martin says, sounding close to tears. “Jon, you--I’ve listened to that tape, _A Guest For Mr. Spider_ , you _can’t_.”   
  
“All right,” Annabelle says, and puts down the knife. She lets go of Elias, and he gasps for breath, as if she were suffocating him as well as drinking from him. She shoves Elias casually off the table, into the grass, and pats the bloody stone beside her. “Come here.” 

“Please,” Martin says desperately, and he’s the one clutching at Jon now. “Please, I gave up so much to keep you safe-- _please_ don’t throw it away. Not for me.”  
  
Jon wrenches his eyes away from Annabelle, and takes a long, lingering look at Martin: his filthy, tearstained face, his huge blue eyes. It’s not a bad last look. “I, um, I’m sorry,” Jon says to him, and Martin shakes his head hard. Jon carefully works his hand free of Martin’s, feeling like he’s severing a limb. Martin immediately grabs Jon’s face in his hands, clinging to him. “I--take Elias to the hospital, and--find Basira. You’ll be fine,” he says, trying to sound certain. “Maybe, um. Maybe take a different job.”  
  
“You are such an idiot,” Martin says fiercely, and Jon doesn’t--doesn’t love him, but he thinks he might’ve been able to, if he’d had a chance, and he is very likely about to die, so--Jon kisses him, a quick, awkward brush of mouths. Martin sucks in a sharp, hurt breath, and then Jon wrenches away from him, walking towards the stone table.   
  
It feels terrible, walking alone for the first time since the ritual fell. It feels much further than the simple walk to the water’s edge. Jon is shivering with either fear or cold, and he’s not sure which. 

Annabelle is watching him, a small smile on her lips. The great spider that is also Annabelle Cane shifts slightly, crouching over the table but leaving him just enough space to lie down on the bloody stain Elias left on the stone. As Jon settles down, he meets Elias’s gaze for the first time.  
  
Elias looks like hell, obviously. If he were human, he would already be dead. But he’s smiling too, very faintly, even as blood trickles down from the corner of his mouth. Jon takes a heartbeat to briefly hate that he needed to save Elias at all.  
  
“What,” Jon snaps, crossing his arms over his chest, trying to quiet his frantically beating heart as Annabelle reaches for him, picking up her little bright knife, as the spider’s venom drips down onto him from above.  
  
Elias murmurs something too quiet to hear, and Jon realizes the mist rising up from the river has grown thicker, almost to a fog.  
  
He looks for where he left Martin standing on the bank, and realizes in a panic that he doesn’t see him.  
  
Annabelle’s arms settle around him, and the knife bites into Jon’s neck, the fangs descend. The full force of her body begins to settle onto Jon.  
  
“I said,” Elias repeats, rasping and amused and suddenly audible in the rising fog, “ _Gilthoniel A Elbereth_.”  
  
Annabelle screams.  
  
The fog drops, and Jon realizes Martin is on the stone table beside him, the--fucking fountain pen buried in Annabelle’s stomach. She clutches at his hands, still shrieking, and Martin drives it in again, twisting this time.  
  
Jon scrambles to pick up the knife Annabelle dropped at his side, and goes right for her heart. It pushes in easily, and what pours from the wound is--not spiders at all, but light.  
  
The vast spider above them shrieks again and _retreats,_ vanishing into the wood to lick its monstrous wounds, and Annabelle is still bleeding light, limp as a corpse.  
  
“All right, gentleman,” Elias says hoarsely from the ground. “That’s enough. Best to-- _ahh_ ,” he winces as he halfway manages to sit up. “Best to get out before she implodes.”  
  
Jon turns to stare at Martin, who’s also staring at him, wide-eyed and gore-spattered, and--  
  
“ _God_ , Jon,” Martin breathes, and hugs him, a fast hard press of bodies before he’s rushing to help Jon off the table, putting the bloody fountain pen back in his pocket.  
  
*  
  
Between the two of them, they manage to lift Elias up from the forest floor, and when draped over both their shoulders he can just about move--which is good, since more and more light is pouring out of Annabelle’s corpse, and Jon doesn’t want to see another goddamn explosion tonight. 

They reach the stairs, and Jon recognizes with a weird jolt that they really are only on the top floor of the British Museum. They rush down them as quick as they can, not pausing for speech.  
  
They leave by a fire exit near the west stairs, and as soon as they hit the pavement there’s an odd silence, and then a white burst of--something.  
  
Jon expects to find the building collapsed when he opens his eyes, but it appears unchanged. He is distantly certain that anything supernatural left in the building has been thoroughly and utterly destroyed, however.  
  
“Right,” Martin says, swaying a little on his feet. “Um, do you--I think I lost my mobile, in there. Do you have--?”  
  
“I don’t think so,” Jon says, a bit dazed himself.  
  
“I do,” Elias says, and as Jon is fishing around in Elias’s jacket pocket for his mobile, he takes the opportunity to lean in close to Jon’s ear and say, intimate and amused: “Really, Jon? Tolkien?”  
  
“Shut _up_ ,” Jon says bitterly, hand closing around the phone.  
  
They are all admitted to A&E. Elias is taken at once to the ICU, Martin is immediately hooked up to an IV, and Jon--  
  
Jon will be fine as soon as he can sleep and read a statement, but he lets the hospital run a few tests anyway. He texts Basira from Elias’s phone, letting her know they all made it out.  
  
_Great,_ she texts back, flat. _We found Melanie. Daisy’s okay--staying overnight at St John’s._  
  
_What room,_ he replies. _We’re in A &E. _  
  
Basira gives him the room number, and when the tests all come back negative, Jon gets out of bed and goes to find Martin.  
  
Martin was never physically hurt to begin with, so he’s just sitting out in the waiting room, shoulders hunched, eyes on the ground.  
  
“Hey,” Jon says awkwardly, and Martin flinches, jumping up to his feet.  
  
“You--you’re all right?” Martin asks, at the same time that Jon says “I thought maybe you’d’ve gone home,” and they both flush.  
  
“I’m fine,” Jon says, cheeks hot. “Thanks to, um. To you.”  
  
“Glad to hear it,” Martin says, and shuffles a little. “Do you want me to go home?” he asks, a little painfully, and Jon’s chest aches.  
  
“No,” he says, too tired to be anything but honest. “I mean--you should probably sleep, we should all sleep, but--no, I want you here.”  
  
“Oh,” Martin says. His eyes are shiny again, for reasons Jon is also too tired to make out. “Okay?”   
  
“Listen,” Jon says, brandishing Elias’s phone like it’s a reason to be there. “Basira and Daisy are two floors up. I thought--we could go and--bring Basira a coffee.”  
  
“That’s,” Martin begins, too soft, and clears his throat. “That’s a great idea, Jon.”  
  
“The canteen’s down this way,” Jon says stiffly, and--trying not to overthink it--he holds out his hand.  
  
Martin takes it, and something relaxes in Jon’s chest. 

They walk together down to the canteen, not really talking, and what with one thing and another Jon finds himself thinking about the bloody Lord of the Rings again as Martin fixes individual teas for all of them out of a vending machine, because of course he knows how Basira takes her tea.  
  
_It’s like in the great stories, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was, when so much bad happened?_  
  
“Jaffa cakes or--” Martin squints at the vending machine. “Prepackaged blueberry muffins?”  
  
Jon shakes his head, chastising himself for sentimentality. “Jaffa cakes,” he says. “They don’t put actual blueberries in those. They’re just dyed gelatin.”  
  
Martin slots a few coins into the machine, and Jon--can’t quite help himself from remembering the rest of it. Because he wants to believe--needs to believe--that the shadow is only a passing thing.  
  
What are you holding onto, Jon? he asks himself, and accepts a package of jaffa cakes so that Martin can carry the teas.  
  
It feels like an answer, or enough of one for now. 

**Author's Note:**

> The bits stolen from Tolkien are all either from the Shelob scene in the Two Towers, Sam rescuing Frodo from the tower in Mordor, or obviously the ending monologue in the Two Towers movie. 
> 
> Comments make me happy. :)


End file.
